Part 31 (1/2)

'Yes! Big one not fit.'

The Tormentor, if it had heard the exchange, did not react its slow dance went on. Siel took a deep breath, counted to three, then yelled, 'All of you, up and run, now!'

She got up and dashed toward Tii without pausing to see if the others followed. Tii darted off like a rabbit, out of a groundman hole too small for the rest of them to fit through. He dived into a slanted cut in the ground she'd not have seen without him going through it first. She dived in after him, her feet hitting its floor painfully hard.

She rolled away to make room for the others. Gorb's head poked in but his shoulders would not fit. 'Tii! What about the giant?' said Siel.

Tii eyed Gorb nervously. 'Cave, that way,' he said, pointing. 'Go in. Big enough. Meet there soon.'

'I'm going to go find Bald,' said Gorb, 'I left him down the path. They might've got him.'

'Fine, but go! You're blocking the hole!'

Gorb stood aside for the Mayor's men, who slid down the dim tunnel and gazed about as though hardly daring to believe what they saw. The small s.p.a.ce filled with their hoa.r.s.e panting. Tii looked at them pensively as though he'd not expected this many would be coming underground with him. Siel was too relieved to care. She laughed, embraced the man next to her, embraced Tii. 'Why are you here?' she said, crying tears of relief.

'Follow,' he said. 'Follow you from place with water. Never far. Tunnels all beneath. Secret tunnels, big people never find. Found friends, below. They come too. Not far.'

'You followed me all this way? Since the tower?'

'Followed, by stone paths. Deep path.' He tapped the cavern wall. 'Felt you. Felt bad things, near you. But no way up. Stone told us where you came. Hard work to follow. You go fast. Where Shadow?'

Eric, he means where's Eric. 'I don't know, Tii. He's not with us. Can you help us? Can you lead us all back to Tanton, underground? It may be the only safe way for us to get there.'

'I take you,' Tii said, still eyeing off the Mayor's entourage with grave concern. 'These men come?'

'Yes. I know that's uncomfortable for you. But Shadow would want it.'

'For Shadow. I take men to city. Only for Shadow.'

5.

Their brief walk through the caverns was the closest Siel had come to happiness in a while now: a rush of relief and joy to be alive. Her head spun with what she'd seen in Far Gaze's spell. Generations had known only inevitable defeat or long and bitter stalemate. She felt she were dreaming. What would her parents think, that this day had come in their daughter's lifetime? Would they feel avenged by her part in making history, or just saddened by all she'd gone through?

'I did it for you,' she whispered, tears coming to her eyes as she imagined them with her now, hearing her. 'I did it all for you.'

If Tii's groundman friends were nearby, they were too nervous to show themselves. Soon he took them to a part of the tunnel he had to widen out for them to pa.s.s through. On the other side, Gorb the half-giant waited in a hillside cave. Next to him Bald rocked back and forth on his heels, face covered with his hands. Gorb spoke consoling words. One of the guns was braced on his knee. A small dead Tormentor lay in broken pieces at the cave entrance.

The Mayor touched Gorb's gun barrel very carefully. 'What is this device?' he said.

'Bald made it,' said Gorb. A hint of anger had come into his slow speech. 'I got six more of em in the pack. It's what I wanted to show you earlier. But you rode off, left me behind. It cost one of your men his life. That matter much?'

'Watch your words, giant,' said Tauk.

'Watch yours, human. Your bones break easy; your skin is soft; that sword won't kill me.'

'This is an ally of ours,' said Siel, mortified.

Gorb scoffed. 'Not of mine. His city never did much for my kind. Made it a crime to hunt us. But that didn't stop em. One bribe and the Hunter's free. I'm not loyal to him. I could break all these guns. Or I could take Bald and run to some other city. Think a different city would want a look at these guns? They might make a thousand more. Then they'll make war on him,' he jerked his thumb at Tauk, 'whether they call him friend today or not. Like he'll do to them.'

'I do not make war on friends,' said Tauk in a gentler tone. 'I can't speak for past rulers of my city. You remain free to go where you will.'

'And not because of some human boss's say-so,' said Gorb.

'Of course. You're invited to come with us to the safety of my city's walls, if you will mind your words. I cannot be spoken to this way before my people.'

'I'll go with those two if they want me.' Gorb nodded to Siel and Far Gaze. 'I'll ask them that in private.'

'I've not decided my course,' grunted the folk magician. Still naked, he sat with legs crossed on the stone floor. 'It is now a very changed world. Leave me alone, all of you. Mayor, some advice. Get back to your city, prepare it for battle, if battle is not already upon it. I'll visit to claim my debt when I am ready. And I will claim it. Lives are expensive. The lives of Mayors? More so.'

Tauk's jaw clenched; he didn't reply. He and his men filed out through the cave, back into the tunnels.

Siel picked up from the ground one of the broken pieces of Tormentor Gorb had blasted apart. She had to will herself to touch it, but it was just like holding cool stone. The spikes were slightly flexible. 'The corpses get weaker, but very slowly,' said Far Gaze, watching her with his eyes half closed. 'They stay hard but become easier to cut and break. It is not like any other flesh I know.'

'What are they?' she said, and suddenly tears were in her eyes. Angrily she wiped them away. 'I can't understand them. Not anything about them.'

'The wolf scented things which I now understand. The airs that changed them are not normal, not even in Levaal South. They are like poisonous silt on a river bottom. Something kicked them up, probably the stoneflesh giant that crossed. They settled quickly and sank again. Your friend Tii and his people will need to stay away from tunnels near the Conflict Point, once this poison settles again.'

'Conflict Point,' she repeated, intrigued by the phrase. 'What is this poison? A flung weapon?'

'In effect. But so is a violent storm. Maybe we just got in the way. Maybe it was hurled at us on purpose.'

'Must you abuse the Mayor?' she said.

Far Gaze laughed. 'I have the same regard for him as the giant does. He may be fine as lords of men go, but I have known many polite thieves, charismatic traitors, articulate fools. Barbarians who trouble to sc.r.a.pe the blood from their hands don't much impress me either.'

'He is none of those things!'

He looked at her with renewed interest. 'I see.'

'You see what?'

He chuckled. 'What is your course, Siel, now that the old war is not quite lost?'

She sat and buried her face in her hands. 'I'm tired. I want it to be over, I want to live a different life.'

'Poor child. You've done more than most. But you've seen too much now to ever have peace. The nightmares will always come. Part of you will always trudge through battlefields and the reek of death. There are ways to dull the sting. What of the next few days? Those first.'

'I don't know.'

'Giant?'

'I won't fit in the tunnels,' said Gorb, whose voice had lost its edge of anger and was ponderous again. 'I'm better alone, or hidden somewhere. I'll just wander, or go back to the tower. There's a mage there. I've seen him in the valleys. He spelled the village, made it vanish. He might want strong hands. What about you, wolf?'